


Bookwyrm

by Pandora (paperclipbutterfly)



Category: Elsewhere University (Webcomic)
Genre: Gen, Students, The Gentry - Freeform, The Library, other creatures
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-14
Updated: 2017-07-14
Packaged: 2018-12-01 22:02:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11495628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperclipbutterfly/pseuds/Pandora
Summary: A little wyrm that loves that taste of words calls the Elsewhere University Library its home.





	Bookwyrm

There is a bookwyrm in The Library.

Note the spelling. Not a book _worm._ A book _wyrm._

No one is entirely sure when it snuck into the Elsewhere University Library, but one thing has become entirely certain: it is never, _ever_ leaving.

And why should it leave, with a veritable unlimited floor plan filled to the bell tower with delicious, fragrant tomes to claim and hoard and _sample._

An ink-black serpentine wyrm that originally was not much bigger than a rabbit, it used to scamper here and there in the library looking for open tomes to slurp the words out of (it is a terribly messy eater, much to the librarians’ chagrin). The words it eats etch themselves somewhere onto its dark hide, though it has consumed so many letters in so many languages that it is difficult now to see where new bits of prose are added.

Students have been warned repeatedly over the years not to feed the bookwyrm. But there are always those who do not heed the warnings of the librarians. It used to be a funny pastime for students that had become stuck in one section or another of the library’s labyrinthine stacks to feed scraps of paper with vulgar words to the then tiny bookwyrm and then try to find where the offending epithets manifested. The bookwyrm was not terribly picky about the words it ate back then, because it was always hungry. Whether they were in good taste or bad, it didn’t matter; its appetite was insatiable.

And this kind of recklessness is why it grew so large in such a, relatively, short amount of time. It sprang up to the size of a cat one semester, then a large dog a year later, and then eventually… well, to the point where it’s a very good thing that the library has a mostly Other architecture, because it surely would have burst the building by now. And the bigger it grew, the more territorial it became. The more it hoarded tomes in certain sections (it really seemed to savor Anne McCaffrey’s works, but would never be found anywhere near Hemingway, for example). The more aggressive it became to students and librarians alike who needed the books also.

Hoping to avoid another calamity like the last wyrm that took up residence on the campus, the librarians decided to make good use of their new pet. With a copious amount of parchment and ink, they lured the bookwyrm down down down deep into the seldom used catacombs of the library and set it to work. They knew that once it was presented with its new collection that it would never stray far from it again. And there it stays.

It was a constant conundrum that the librarians faced in the early days, when the Fair Folk and students were beginning to… mingle. A place filled with a vast amount of knowledge like The Library is always bound to have certain… archives that are better perused by no one. Ancient texts. Tomes of ages, dated further back than it is currently recorded that written word existed. The language of the birds, poetry of the stars, and truths that would shatter the mind. Words that needed to be preserved but not necessarily studied. Not by the Good Neighbors, and certainly not by incoming freshmen. _Absolutely_ not by school administrators.

A tiny bit of such knowledge is dangerous. A little more is a disaster. Lots of that knowledge, though, would present a crisis of cataclysmic proportions. These are the books, bound in iron and chains, locked with enchantment and dusted with bottled oblivion, that the wyrm keeps. Guards. Claims. Hoards.

Not all words fade with time. Some grow sharp teeth and attack from the dark instead.

So if you are lost in The Library and find yourself in a place that is blacker than spilled ink, smells of iron and sulfur, and sounds like an ancient bellows, turn around and leave out the way you came.

Yesterday, if possible (which, in The Library, of course, it always, _always_ is).


End file.
